Thickeners are useful for adjusting the viscosity and the rheological behaviour of detergents compositions in order to make them easy to pour and dose. Structurants thicken, but also provide a suspensive benefit, allowing ingredients such as perfumes, particulates, and the like, to be stably suspended in the liquid detergent composition. Such structurants also prevent phase separation of liquid laundry detergents, such as separation into two liquid phases or settling of suspended solids.
Hydrogenated castor oil has been used traditionally for thickening and structuring aqueous detergent formulations. WO 2011/031940 describes a structuring system for liquid laundry detergents comprising from 2-10% by weight of crystals of hydrogenated castor oil, from 2-10% by weight of an alkanolamine and from 5-50% by weight of the anion of an anionic surfactant. However, hydrogenated castor oil is hydrolysed by lipase enzymes commonly used in laundry detergents and therefore cannot be used to thicken or structure liquid laundry detergents containing lipase enzymes, or other ingredients which hydrolyse hydrogenated castor oil.
WO 2011/112887 describes di-amido gellants for thickening detergent compositions that may comprise enzymes.
WO 2014/009027 describes 12-hydroxyoctadecanoic acid mono-amides for thickening aqueous surfactant compositions. The disclosed 12-hydroxyoctadecanoic acid mono-amides are stable to lipase enzymes.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,977,894 describes an organoclay rheological additive for non-aqueous fluids comprising an organically modified montmorillonite clay, glyceryl tri-12-hydroxystearate and a 12-hydroxystearic acid diamide of a C2-C18 alkylenediamine. The document also discloses the 12-hydroxystearic acid tetraamide of tetraethylene pentamine as not useful for this purpose.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,853 discloses defoamer compositions containing solid particles of an amide suspended in an organic liquid. The amide may be prepared by the reaction of a fatty acid with a primary polyamine, such as ethylene diamine, diethylene triamine, tetraethylene pentamine or hexamethylene diamine. A mixture of the ethylene diamine diamide of stearic acid and the ethylene diamine diamide of 12-hydroxystearic acid is used in the examples.